Morality Police Detainees Assaulted In New Wave Of Crackdown

Multiple women arrested by the morality police in the latest crackdown since the weekend have informed Iran International about severe violence including severe physical assault as well as sexual verbal abuse.

A 17-year-old girl said that when she was arrested in Tehran’s Daneshjoo Park, the officers treated her violently, pulling her hair and beating her right arm and thighs with a baton, in addition to making sexual insults.

Male officers in the morality police van that transported the arrested women to a detention center beat the women who refused to submit to arrest.

The young woman told Iran International that at the detention center, the officers made women unlock their mobile phones and to reveal their picture galleries and social media accounts to the brutal state security. She saw more than fifty women in custody, most of whom were in their early 20s or teens.

A 19-year-old girl told Iran International that she refused to unlock her phone for the plainclothes officers at the detention center, so they hit her stomach and genitals with an electric shocker, addressed her with sexual profanity and sexually insulted her family. She was forced to cooperate to avoid being taken to the security agencies.

Several hours after their arrest, both of these girls were released from the detention center after providing their details, home addresses, telephone numbers, and fingerprints and signatures on sheets that were written "did not respect the hijab."

Reports given to Iran International indicate that hundreds of women have been arrested throughout the country, including Tehran and Karaj, for disobeying the mandatory hijab since Saturday when a new policy called project Noor, came into place, allowing further oppression for women and girls amid nationwide hijab refusal.

An Iranian journalist and post-graduate student of political science, Dina Ghalibaf, 24, was arrested at her home in Tehran on Tuesday after describing in a tweet her recent encounter with the police.

On Monday, she sent out a series of tweets in which she described how police used a shocker and handcuffed her at the Sadeghieh metro station for not wearing the mandatory veil.

Shahed Alavi, an editor of the Iran International Newsdesk, states that the regime is concerned people may expand their power and overthrow the government should the country be vulnerable to an attack by Israel amid the two countries' shadow war which came to the fore on Saturday night when Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment towards the Jewish state.

“This is not the Iranian people’s war. The state does not have the nation on its side, yet the regime is trying to force legitimacy by instilling fear and inflicting violence,” he added.

“The government wishes to demonstrate that while they are weak in foreign policy, they still possess power in the domestic arena,” Alavi said.